Putin meets Xi in Beijing amid widening gulf with West

It was a show of unity, with talk of peace and cooperation, but the backdrop was a world divided and – in Ukraine and Gaza –  engaged in deadly combat.

The first meeting between Vladimir Putin and China’s president Xi Jinping since Russia’s president was re-elected, effectively unopposed, in March came in a week of huge anti-Russian protests in Georgia and the attempted assassination of Slovakia’s anti-western prime minister.